What is the difference between the INT function and the ROUND function? The INT function always discards the decimal, and the ROUND function:

ROUND does not always round up - it rounds up only when the following digit is 5 or greater and rounds down otherwise; it does not subsequently discard all decimal places.

ROUND does not discard all decimal places; it retains the number of decimal places specified by the caller, which is the key functional difference from INT.

The ROUND function evaluates the digit immediately following the target decimal position and rounds the number either up or down accordingly, then returns the result with the exact number of decimal places specified by the second argument. This is fundamentally different from INT, which performs no rounding and simply discards everything after the decimal point.

ROUND performs rounding as a single operation to the specified precision; it does not first discard unwanted decimal places and then round, as that sequence would produce incorrect intermediate values.